Archive of Our Own ^beta

In the period of his life that he firmly labels “Before”—before the agency, before Akutagawa, before the tiger—touch had always, always meant pain. The director would grab his arm, the warm skin of his palm on Atsushi’s forearm, only to jab him with a needle in the other. The other children of the orphanage stayed as far away from him as they could manage, and if they did touch him, they would recoil or leave bruises. No one ever touched him unless it was to leave a mark.

Dazai is the first to touch him without ill intent. It’s after a typical case, and he and Kyouka had managed to capture the suspect without significant property damage. Kenji still leads the agency in terms of property damage, but he never gets yelled at. Kunikida always yells at Astushi though, even though the damage is usually Kyouka’s fault.

Dazai smiles, before ruffling his hair with one bandaged hand. Atsushi freezes for a half-second, just enough for Dazai’s expression to shift slightly and for Kyouka to suddenly materialize at his back. He forces the initial panic down as Dazai removes his hand, keeping the action casual enough but deliberate.

“Um. Uh, Kunikida will be happy,” he says, trying to dispel the new tension in the air. “Less paperwork!”

It still comes out shaky, but Dazai grins and lets the conversation shift. “Good,” he says. “Because I’ve slipped my paperwork into his stack.”

Atsushi groans.

But after that, Dazai doesn’t touch him without warning. Every time he ruffles his hair or pats him on the shoulder the movement in carefully telegraphed, designed to let him know what’s coming. Nothing changes, but he can tell Kunikida’s noticed something’s up, his expression going neutral as Dazai claps him on the shoulder. Atsushi usually doesn’t pay attention to the blond man, too busy wondering at the casual affection that Dazai dispenses.

…

Kyouka grabs his hand once on that first day after he saves her from the train and he almost jerks it out of her grasp. She doesn’t seem to notice, teary eyed and shaking so badly and looking so small, so he just grips her hands tightly and then takes her home.

(Home is now the agency, bright and warm and kind and so distant from life at the orphanage that his head spins.)

Later, she grabs his hand when they go out, on the Ferris wheel, while grabbing crepes, and it’s become a habit. The feeling of her palm in his is not new. Her hands are soft in places and callused from her sword in others, and he knows the grooves by heart now.

It never startles him. Maybe because her hands are smooth and warm and kind, unlike the orphanage director’s rough palms and thick knuckles.

Usually the hand-holding is the extent to which they get close. One day though, she leans into his space and he startles. Badly.

They’d been trying a new chazuke recipe, and he’d been pleasantly surprised that the kitchen wasn’t on fire yet.

She looks him up and down, and he feels strangely naked in front of her. She puts her hands out and he slips his hands into hers. She squeezes them gently, and he understands the unsaid apology.

“It happened earlier. With Dazai too.” Her voice is quiet, but it feels too loud in his apartment, almost like its echoing off the walls.

He nods slowly, his mind a thousand miles away in the shadow of a stained glass window, covered in blues and purples from the light filtering through the flower pattern of the glass and bruises of the same color.

“Hmm,” Kyouka says, and never brings it up again.

A week later, they’re sitting on a park bench and she slowly leans over and rests her head on his shoulder. He stiffens for a moment but relaxes when she lightly grips his hand in hers. They stay like that for a while, until all of the tension has bled out of his shoulders and he rests his head on hers.

Kyouka smiles inwardly. She knows how difficult these small victories are, but she’ll fight for them. (She’d fight anyone who was cruel to her tiger. Anyone.)

…

Of course, Kunikida notices. He’s observant, only rivaled in deduction skills by Rambo. He can’t help but feel a pinch of something when Kyouka falls asleep on Atsushi’s shoulder during a meeting and he never flinches, just adjusts her head when it starts to slip off of him.

Rule Number 36 of Agency meetings in the Agency rulebook (written by Kunikida) is that all employees must pay attention during meetings. No sleeping, no eating, and no daydreaming.

He lets her sleep for this once. He’ll yell at Dazai twice to make up for his sudden lapse in consistency.

…

The rest of the agency notices, because they are detectives, and because Atsushi has quickly become a favorite.

Tanizaki goes in for a hug once, after a mission that had lasted three days and had featured twenty-seven bombs, a surprise appearance by Akutagawa, four suicide attempts by Dazai, and two Kunikida rants. He does not miss the way the half-tiger stiffens against him, and how it takes a few moments for him to hug back.

He lets his smile slip where Atsushi can’t see and hugs him tighter.

He shares a look with Naomi over Atsushi’s shoulder.

The guild is no stranger to trauma. They deal with it accordingly and they’ve all healed in some way (some wounds have only left faint scars, while others are still scabbing over, pink with healing but no longer split wide open).

So, everyone gradually adopts Dazai’s movements, and Atsushi, oblivious as ever, continues to alternatively shy away from their touch and almost wonderingly accept it.

Yosano grins when she loops her hand around his neck and gives him a noogie with the other, and it only takes a half-moment for Atushi to start playfully resisting her. She knows he’s pretending because she’s seen his full strength and even at half-power he could send her flying across the room. This is progress. The first time she’d tried, forgetting his aversion to touch, he’d sent her crashing into the desks, dazed in fear. He’d apologized so many times, but she’d brushed him off, patting his head and telling him he’d have to hit harder to make a mark on her. (This was a lie, because the bruise on her back hadn’t faded for two weeks.)

Now he no longer gets violent, but it still takes a moment for him to relax. She’ll take what she can get.

…

Lucy is not soft. She is rough around the edges, hard where Atsushi is soft. Still, she’s careful when he comes to visit her, because even she can see the value in him, the softness.

She’s moved into an apartment below the agency. She can’t join them, because it would be too much too fast. She doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to join them.

She can join Atsushi.

She’s not a tactile person, but she makes sure their hands don’t touch when she hands him the teacup, and that when they sprawl together on the sofa that she doesn’t lean into him. She knows what it feels like to expect pain with every touch. When she thinks about it, the iron brands on her arms ache, and she thinks about them aching in tandem with the marks Atsushi had shown her on the airship.

So, she’s not soft. But she knows how to be, for a boy who saved her from more than herself.

…

Akutagawa handles it so badly its almost endearing.

After months of smacking each other around like there’s no tomorrow, they’re not quite sure how to handle being allies. Atsushi can’t quite seem to calm down around him, always a little nervous, just enough on edge that it’s noticeable. Akutagawa notices, but chalks it up to his own aura, and not Atsushi’s natural skittishness.

He goes to grab the tiger’s shoulder once, to turn him around and ask (technically, interrogate) him for information on their newest joint case, but Dazai stops him, grabbing his wrist hard. He lowers Akutagawa’s hand down to waist-level before letting go.

“Atsushi,” he says pleasantly. “Why don’t you share the case details with Akutagawa while I grab the car?”

The tiger turns around and nods, grinning slightly. The grin slides off when he turns to Akutagawa, the nervousness returning.

Dazai walks off, and Rashomon quivers as he stares at the departing man’s back. What was that about, he wonders, before shrugging it off to listen to the tiger stutter through the information. Dazai’s done stranger things for stranger reasons.

When their grudging partnership has moved into what could be called friendship, to the surprise of literally everyone who knows them, Akutagawa wonders what happened that day, more out of concern than curiosity, now that the tiger is his friend.

He thinks it might have something to do with the way Atsushi flinches at sudden movements and pauses whenever they accidentally brush skin.

(He thinks that might have something to do with the tiger’s time at the orphanage. He’d looked into Atsushi’s past once, combing through the mafia’s extensive files. What he’d found matches up with this nervous wreck of a boy. A boy he now knows better than almost all his subordinates except possibly Higuchi, who he knows almost as well as he knows Gin.)

Once, on a mission, he drags Atsushi along with him into a hiding place, a cramped closet. They’re squished together, skin on skin, but it’s the only way to avoid the guards. They’re on a stealth mission, because Tanizaki, the only agent half-way decent at espionage wasn’t available, and Kunikida, who actually can do stealth, was drowning in paperwork. Because of Dazai. So, they sent the glowing tiger with him. On the stealth mission.

In the closet, he turns to look at Atsushi, checking for any injuries. The guards hadn’t looked like they’d gotten a hit in, but it never hurt to be sure.

He startles though, because it almost looks like Atsushi isn’t breathing. He’s curled up with his knees to his chest, trying to put as much space between their bodies as possible, even if it means being pushed up against the cold metal interior of the closet. His breath is coming in shuddering gasps, and Akutagawa listens for the sound of footsteps before yanking the door open (quietly, because he can do stealth, unlike some agents) and they half tumble onto the floor.

Atsushi immediately puts more space in between them, and Akutagawa lets him. He lets Atsushi lean against the wall, before slowly kneeling down in front of him.

He lets Atsushi’s breaths even out, and the color return to his face. Then he silently helps him up and the finish the rest of the mission without saying another word.

Atsushi doesn’t speak until they’re heading back to the rendezvous point.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, arms curled around himself. (He can feel the calluses from the director, he can see the needle, all he feels is stop, stop stop.) “I didn’t mean to. It won’t happen again.”

He looks up to Akutagawa and back down to the ground again. “I won’t compromise the mission,” he says shakily.

Akutagawa just sighs, and the tiger curls further into himself, a feat that Akutagawa didn’t think was possible.

“It will happen again,” he says, when its apparent that Atsushi is finished speaking. Atsushi flushes, and starts his denials, but he cuts him off. “You are not yet past this.” He lets the words sink in. “But we can make it so that you do get past this. The fault lies with me. I should have noticed.” I did notice, he thinks. I noticed but did nothing else.

The other boy is wide-eyed now, staring at him. Akutagawa pulls out the hard drive of information they’d retrieved from his pocket and holds it out. Atsushi reaches out to take it, and Akutagawa slowly makes sure that their hands don’t touch when he hands it over.

Atsushi looked so stupidly grateful.

…

Akutagawa had thought the issue was resolved, but then he’d gone and fallen in love with the stupid brat.

One thing he’s noticed, though, is that in tiger form, Astushi has no reservations. Akutagawa is bleeding, leaning on the wall for support, and Astushi ambles over, fully transformed. He nudges at his hand with his nose, sliding Akutagawa’s palm onto his back. He grips the fur tightly, using the tiger’s body as support and he manages to limp out of the burning building.

Once they get out into the star-filled night, he stumbles, ending up sprawled on his back. Atsushi nuzzles him gently, prodding at him with a paw. Akutagawa puts a hand into his fur and strokes it. The tiger lets out something that could almost be called a purr, a throaty growl.

Then Atsushi shifts back, Akutagawa’s hand clasped in his. Atsushi look so worried, leaning over him. All Akutagawa can think about before he passes out is how the touch isn’t giving Atsushi any pause.

Later, when he wakes up in his apartment, Dazai appears in the doorway, looks towards Atsushi asleep on a pile of cushions next to his futon, then gives Akutagawa something that might be a nod of approval.

…

After many late-night missions and conversations under the stars and light handholds, they’d finally reached the point. There’s a new tension between them, sitting on the park bench at midnight. He’s surprised when Atsushi’s fingers curl around his, warm and smooth. He’s even more surprised when Atsushi leans over and puts their foreheads together, eyes closed and his grip on Akutagawa’s hand firm.

“I love you,” he says, and something inside Akutagawa either breaks or snaps into place. He releases his breath and knows that it understood as yes.

Atsushi pulls away, opening his eyes. They truly are beautiful, the gold and purple just barely visible in the dim light of the street lamp.

Then the tiger leans forward, shaking slightly. He can feel the fine tremors in Atsushi’s hand and his. Atsushi continues to lean in, until their lips press together, and Akutagawa’s hands end up in Atsushi’s silver hair. When they pull away, he places his hands on Atsushi’s cheeks, running his hand over his cheekbones. Atushi doesn’t flinch. Ah, Akutagawa realizes, we’ve made it.

The gaping wound is closed, leaving only a white scar. It had taken years of careful action from the agency and from Akutagawa, but vibrant grin on Atsushi’s face was worth it.

Atsushi’s hand comes up to push the hair out of his face, lingering on the motion for a hair too long, and they both can’t think of anywhere they’d rather be.

…

The agency celebrates, because they love an excuse for booze. It’s not a party, its just the members of the agency who are old enough to drink making a toast to progress. Nobody ever outright talks about Atsushi’s reservations, but they all notice when Dazai stops telegraphing his movements and that Atsushi no longer stiffens when Yosano grabs him, or that Kyouka leans into his space now and that he seems to enjoy her quiet company.

They all notice the stolen kisses between Akutagawa and their half-tiger.

So they clink their glasses together and wait for a brighter tomorrow.